Leaving the ruins of Machu Picchu for later investigation, we now pushed on down the Urubamba Valley, crossed the bridge of San Miguel, passed the house of Senor Lizarraga, first of modern Peruvians to write his name on the granite walls of Machu Picchu, and came to the sugar-cane fields of Huadquina.  We had now left the temperate zone and entered the tropics.

At Huadquina we were so fortunate as to find that the proprietress of the plantation, Senora Carmen Vargas, and her children, were spending the season here.  During the rainy winter months they live in Cuzco, but when summer brings fine weather they come to Huadquina to enjoy the free-and-easy life of the country.  They made us welcome, not only with that hospitality to passing travelers which is common to sugar estates all over the world, but gave us real assistance in our explorations.  Senora Carmen’s estate covers more than two hundred square miles.  Huadquina is a splendid example of the ancient patriarchal system.  The Indians who come from other parts of Peru to work on the plantation enjoy perquisites and wages unknown elsewhere.  Those whose home is on the estate regard Senora Carmen with an affectionate reverence which she well deserves.  All are welcome to bring her their troubles.  The system goes back to the days when the spiritual, moral, and material welfare of the Indians was entrusted in encomienda to the lords of the repartimiento or allotted territory.

Huadquina once belonged to the Jesuits.  They planted the first sugar cane and established the mill.  After their expulsion from the Spanish colonies at the end of the eighteenth century, Huadquina was bought by a Peruvian.  It was first described in geographical literature by the Count de Sartiges, who stayed here for several weeks in 1834 when on his way to Choqquequirau.  He says that the owner of Huadquina “is perhaps the only landed proprietor in the entire world who possesses on his estates all the products of the four parts of the globe.  In the different regions of his domain he has wool, hides, horsehair, potatoes, wheat, corn, sugar, coffee, chocolate, coca, many mines of silver-bearing lead, and placers of gold.”  Truly a royal principality.

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Figure

Huadquina
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Incidentally it is interesting to note that although Sartiges was an enthusiastic explorer, eager to visit undescribed Inca ruins, he makes no mention whatever of Machu Picchu.  Yet from Huadquina one can reach Machu Picchu on foot in half a day without crossing the Urubamba River.  Apparently the ruins were unknown to his hosts in 1834.  They were equally unknown to our kind hosts in 1911.  They scarcely believed the story I told them of the beauty and extent of the Inca edifices. [10] When my photographs were developed, however, and they saw with their own eyes the marvelous stonework of the principal temples, Senora Carmen and her family were struck dumb with wonder and astonishment.  They could not understand